Portable handheld medical diagnostic devices are often employed to measure concentrations of biologically significant components of bodily fluids, such as, for example, glucose concentration in blood. The portable handheld medical diagnostic devices and their accessories may work together to measure the amount of glucose in blood and be used to monitor blood glucose in one's home, healthcare facility or other location, for example, by persons having diabetes or by a healthcare professional. Some of the most economical portable handheld medical diagnostic devices are those which provide such measurements via LED-photodiode detection techniques.
For people with diabetes, regular testing of blood glucose level can be an important part of diabetes management. In particular, self-monitoring of blood glucose may require the patient to use a lancet to prick a skin site, typically, a finger for a drop of blood which is provided to a portable handheld medical diagnostic device for testing. Patients may need to repeat this process several times a day. However, due the sensitivity of the fingertips, repeat testing can be quite painful and even traumatic for many users, especially among children and infants.
It is to be appreciated that the smaller the sample amount needed to be used by such devices in order to determine a result, such as a blood glucose level, the smaller and/or shallower the incision made by the lancet is needed, thus resulting in less pain and trauma for the user. However, in conventional portable handheld medical diagnostic devices which measure the amount of glucose in blood via LED-photodiode detection techniques, the sample amount (e.g., greater than 90 nanoliters) needed by such devices results in an incision from a lancet size which still provides some pain and/or trauma to users. Accordingly, there continues to be a need for an improved lancet structure which provides minimum pain and trauma to users by concentrating a correspondingly small blood sample (about 90 nanoliters or less) on a test pad such that a LED-photodiode detection technique employed by of a medical diagnostic device may be used more comfortably by users.